British intelligence and security officials were facing fresh questions about allegations of complicity in torture yesterday after a terrorism suspect appeared in court accused of plotting an al-Qaida attack.
Rangzieb Ahmed, a British citizen from Fallowfield, Greater Manchester, alleges that during a year in captivity in Pakistan he suffered sleep deprivation and severe beatings, and that three fingernails were extracted from his left hand.
– The Guardian
The row between Iraq and the US over security contractors intensified yesterday as Baghdad refuted the US version of a shooting incident and demanded the expulsion of the American Blackwater company.
As Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, called on Washington to replace the private security firm involved in the deaths of at least 11 Iraqis. 8,000 US personnel were stranded inside the heavily fortified green zone in Baghdad after the Government ordered Blackwater to halt operations.
– The Times
For at least a decade, the standard advice to every computer user has been to run antivirus software. But new, more commercial, more complex and stealthier types of malware have people in the industry asking: will antivirus software be effective for much longer? Among the threats they see are malware that uses the ability of the latest processors to run virtual machines that would be hidden from antivirus programs.
Antivirus vendors, though, don’t seem to think they have a problem. “Probably every year people say antivirus software is dead,” says Eric Chen, a research manager at Symantec.
– The Guardian
What future for Smiths Group? There are still many questions over why the company’s proposed joint venture with GE could not be agreed. “Differences over strategic vision” is all Smiths is offering by way of explanation, though we may all know a little more come the company’s full-year profits announcement next week.
In the meantime, shareholders must content themselves with assurances from Smiths’ chief executive, Keith Butler-Wheelhouse, that the detection division is a great stand-alone business.
Which is true, of course. It’s the market leader in a growth industry – security. But investors hoped the joint venture would bring in much more revenue, particularly from the US. The likely cost-cutting and synergies that analysts had factored into their profit forecasts will no doubt be removed, though the impact on the bottom line would have been minimal in the short term anyway.
– The Telegraph
